Recognize That Different Personalities Respond to Organizational Change in Different Ways
Right Brain Avoid or Left Brain Approach?
Our brains process motivation in different ways. One study about motivating people to floss their teeth discovered that different sides of the brain lit up in a scanner (the part of the brain activated) depending on how the message was communicated. If a person was more motivated to avoid certain negative things (i.e., floss to avoid bad breath), avoidance type messages motivated them to floss more often. For those motivated more by an approach personality (i.e., if I do such-and-such, I will get something good: floss to get great breath), approach messages motivated them to floss more often. People more influenced by their left brain tend to be motivated more by approach messages and those influenced more by their right brain by avoid messages.
Your church includes both left-brain leaning and right-brain leaning people, so you’ll want to include both avoid and approach messages in your organizational change communication plan.
Why or How?
Not only does your church or ministry include both avoid and approach leaning people, but it includes people who want to get information in different ways. Some people want to know the whys of organizational change related to abstract motivation. Others prefer answers to the how of organizational change related to concrete actions. In other words, your messaging should answer two questions: Why do we need to change, and how are we going to change? Some will need more motivation (the why) and some will need more information (the how).
